Metric, AZ to Asia

Two recent stories—both in the New York Times—make me think the United States may be more ready than ever to interact with the rest of the world.

We’re a great nation, and all—arguably the best place to live in the world. But we’ve often got a bone to pick with all those other countries that populate the globe.

One of those prime bones has been the dreaded metric system, which some would have you believe is a necessary step in the path toward world government. But a chink appeared in the armor we erect against metric—and in Arizona, of all places.

Last week, a Times writer came all the way to Arizona to report on a road-sign anomaly and controversy. On Interstate 19, an odd accumulation of road signs designate distance in kilometers, rather than miles. Those signs are “a throwback to an American experiment with the metric system in the early 1980s that did not get far off the ground.”

Now that the signs are old and worn, and barely reflective, expectations were high that stimulus money could be used to replace them. And the new signs would use miles rather than their metric equivalent.

But then Arizona business owners started crowing. They had spent decades and dollars educating drivers on which exits to use to reach their restaurants, motels and other businesses.

“Keep the metric,” they said.

Countries that have officially adopted the metric system (green). Only three nations (out of 203) have refused to or been unable to officially adopt the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia and the United States.

The whole situation lasted so long that the deadline for stimulus monies was missed.

The story even talks about something called the—you guessed it—U.S. Metric Association:

“A group based in California, [which] advocates conversion to the metric system, has tallied numerous metric signs around the country, most near the borders with Canada and Mexico. But I-19 may be the only Interstate highway that is almost completely metric, making it stand out from all the other stretches of concrete crisscrossing the country.”

Even the conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity weighed in, lampooning the sign project as a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Is Fox even going the extra mile for the metric system? So Internationale of them.

I can tell you one person whom this may make happy—my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Federico. In about 1974, the task fell to him to educate a bunch of kids in the metric system—the wave of the future.

He didn’t have much luck. Blank stares and almost outright revolt confronted him as the St. Columba School kids wondered if they had tumbled into a foreign film—which none of us had ever seen.

The logic and simplicity of a system based on Base 10 escaped us. We preferred the oddities of our own measurement. Familiarity breeds comfort.

We schoolkids were part of an American phenomenon—one that is not phenomenal. After all, we are one of three nations that “have refused to or been unable to” adopt the metric system. Do we really want to hang out with Burma and Liberia? The residents of Green Valley, Ariz., say no.

Well, maybe we should start getting as comfortable as those residents. The second piece from the Times is a column by Thomas L. Friedman. He reveals that China’s blogging community is approaching 70 million—million with an “m.”

The world no longer belongs to the United States, Friedman points out—if it ever did.

“In recent years, with the U.S. economic model having suffered an embarrassing self-inflicted shock, and the ‘Beijing Consensus’ humming along, voices have emerged in China saying ‘the future belongs to us’ and maybe we should let the world, or at least the ’hood, know that a little more affirmatively.”

So influential are those Chinese electronic voices that the U.S. State Department has begun to grant bloggers access to American leaders, “even inviting bloggers to travel in the car with the U.S. ambassador, Jon Huntsman.”

Speeding along, Ambassador Huntsman probably chats about policy and international relations. And outside his car, the blur of road signs that rush by likely never mentions a “mile.”

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4 Responses to “Metric, AZ to Asia”

“a throwback to an American experiment with the metric system in the early 1980s that did not get far off the ground.”

However this is not strictly true. Let me give you two examples:

1 The computer you are now working on is completely metric. It was designed using nanometres for its computer chips, micrometres to layout its circuits, millimetres for its logic board, its case, and its screen. Finally, the screen was called something like 17″ to mean seventeen inches. This is a deliberate delusion on the part of the computer company that is designed to fool you (and most other citizens of the USA) into believing that the USA is not metric.

2 You probably drive an all-metric car where all 100 000 measurements of the car’s 10 000 parts are all designed and built in millimetres. You were then deliberately deceived with the mph and ml on the dashboard and the ” and psi on the tyres. The car companies clearly do not want you to know that the motor industry in the USA successfully upgraded to the metric system in the 1970s.

World Metric Instant
“John in his USMA 48520 raised his doubt in the hope that US shall take another 100-years of wasteful ‘hope’ before it decides to GO METRIC and save the country from ‘wasting tax-payers’ money before falling in line with rest of the world in going metric/the SI metric way.
I have been in my little way calling upon intellegntsia to promote ‘metric reform’ since 1975. AND ‘this year’s World Metric Instant comes on:
2010 October 10H10:10:10 i.e. 2010 October 10H10h:16md:94.4sd (decimal).
The instant shall correspond to 16 decimal minutes (md) & 95th decimal seconds( sd) after 10-hours on 2010 October 10th – the tenth day of tenth month in the 10th year after Y2000 =(15*128+80).
It is my view & hope that it may be United States who may wish to GO METRIC lock-stock & barrel at one stroke (Time, Calendar & Arc-angle inclusive) and lead rest of the world. Please see: http://www.brijvij.com/bb_INSAcontri.pdf andhttp://www.brijvij.com/bb_cb2013mgc.pdf
I welcome ‘improving upon my format’ to mett needs of the World community in the interest of calendar reform!
Brij Bhushan Vij

I wish to crush the notion that the word “dreaded” has any reason to be juxtaposed with the phrase “metric system.” On the contrary, we should be looking forward to the “coveted” metric system—coveted, because the world has embraced it, and recommends it highly to the United States.

The metric system is as eaay to use as dollars and cents. Or, would Americans wish to return to the colonial system of pounds, shillings, and pence?

The metric system officially ceased to be “foreign” to the U.S. in 1988, when the Congress, the duly authorized setter of the Nation’s measurement standard, declared it to be the preferred system of measurement for U.S. trade and commerce. America now needs a coordinated, national plan to make good on this Congressional declaration.

I look forward to my first visit, soon, to Arizona’s “American Highway of the Future,” otherwise known as Interstate 19.

SIncerely,

Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
Vice President and Public Relations Director
U.S. Metric Association
Midland TX US
+1(432)528-7724trusten@grandecom.net